Request to Rollover More Sick Days for Ela Township Employees Rejected

Trustees weighed the possibility of increasing the number of sick days employees could accumulate at Thursday night's Ela Township Board meeting.  

Ela Township employees are currently able to carryover 45 sick days during their careers, and that number will stay the same after trustees voted down a motion to double it.

Employees who don't use the 12 sick days awarded each year are able to apply it to either retirement or if they have major medical issues that would keep them out of work for an extended period of time.

Those unused days can add to their total length of service, thus increasing the amount of their pensions paid for by the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund (IMRF), according to IMRF.org.  

Highway Commissioner Bill Kruckenberg proposed that the board increase the number to 240 days, which is the maximum amount of sick days that IMRF will allow to accumulate over a career.

“The ability to accumulate days has benefits for the township and the employee,” said Kruckenberg.

“Since we started rolling over sick days, it has cut down on the number of sick days that employees are using,” said Kruckenberg. “They can also have those extra days in case they have major medical issues.”

When employees want to retire, they can count unused sick days to tack up to a full year onto their pensions.

“It wouldn’t cost the township anything to increase the number of days employees can rollover,” said Kruckenberg.

“But somebody is going to have to pay, the money doesn’t come from the tooth fairy, it would come from the state,” said Larry Bowman, trustee.

The amount of days that can be accumulated varies in the different townships, but IMRF will only allow employees to use the sick time rollover days if they are within 6 months of retirement.

“We offer a maximum of 45 days and that already seems like a lot to me,” said Anne Dobbertin, trustee.

“Not a lot of employees are using sick days, but once you can’t bank them, they probably will,” said Kruckenberg.

Supervisor Lucy Prouty proposed a middle ground solution, and made a motion to increase the number of accumulated sick days to 90, doubling the current maximum allowed by Ela Township.

The motion failed; Trustees Jack Reck and Dobbertin voted no, and Trustees Nancy Thompson and Bowman abstained.